Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant (20 page)

EDITOR

Jenni Ferrari-Adler is a graduate of Oberlin College and the University of Michigan, where she received an MFA in fiction. She has worked as a reader for
The Paris Review,
a bookseller, an egg seller, and an assistant at a literary agency. Her short fiction has been published in numerous magazines. She lives in New York City.

CONTRIBUTORS

Steve Almond lives and grills in Arlington, Massachusetts. He writes about a variety of oral pleasures, most notably in his story collections,
My Life in Heavy Metal
and
The Evil B.B. Chow.

Jonathan Ames is the author of the novels
I Pass Like Night, The Extra Man,
and
Wake Up, Sir!
; the essay collections
What’s Not to Love?, My Less Than Secret Life,
and
I Love You More Than You Know
; and the editor of
Sexual Metamorphosis: An Anthology of Transsexual Memoirs.
Ames performs frequently as a storyteller and comedian, and has been a recurring guest on
The Late Show with David Letterman.

Jami Attenberg is the author of
Instant Love
and
The Kept Man
(forthcoming). She has written for
Salon, Print, Nylon, Nerve,
and the
San Francisco Chronicle,
among other publications. She lives in Brooklyn.

Laura Calder is the author of
French Food at Home.
Her writing has appeared in publications including
Vogue Entertaining & Travel, Gourmet, Gastronomica, Salon, The Times
(London), the
Los Angeles Times, The Wine Journal,
and
Flare
magazine. Her first television series,
French Food at Home,
will air in 2007.

Mary Cantwell was the author of three memoirs:
American Girl, Speaking with Strangers,
and
Manhattan, When I Was Young.
She was an editor at
Mademoiselle
and
Vogue
and a member of the editorial board of the
New York Times.

Dan Chaon is the author of
You Remind Me of Me, Fitting Ends,
and
Among the Missing,
which was a finalist for the National Book Award. His work has received many honors, most recently the Literature Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He lives in Cleveland, where he does all the cooking for his wife and sons.

Laurie Colwin was the author of five novels:
Happy All the Time; Family Happiness; Goodbye without Leaving; Shine On, Bright and Dangerous Object; A Big Storm Knocked It Over;
three collections of short stories:
Passion and Affect, Another Marvelous Thing, The Lone Pilgrim;
and two collections of essays:
Home Cooking
and
More Home Cooking.

Laura Dave was born in New York City, where she currently resides. She is the author of
London Is the Best City in America,
which is currently being developed as a feature film at Universal Studios. She is at work on her second novel and a screenplay.

Courtney Eldridge is the author of
Unkempt,
a collection of short stories. Her work has appeared in numerous publications, including
A Public Space, McSweeney’s,
and the
Mississippi Review.
She lives in New York City and is working on her first novel.

Nora Ephron is a journalist, novelist, playwright, screenwriter, and director. Her credits include
Heartburn, When Harry Met Sally, Sleepless in Seattle, You’ve Got Mail,
and
Imaginary Friends.
Her latest book is
I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman.
She lives in New York City.

Erin Ergenbright is a codirector of the Loggernaut Reading Series and the author of
The Ex-Boyfriend Cookbook
(with Thisbe Nissen). Her work has appeared in
Tin House, The Believer, Indiana Review, The May Queen: Women on Life, Love, Work, and Pulling It All Together in Your
30
s,
and elsewhere. She teaches writing workshops in the greater Portland area and is frequently preoccupied by the idea of owning a horse.

M. F. K. Fisher was the author of numerous books of essays and reminiscences, many of which have become American classics.

Colin Harrison is the author of the novels
Afterburn, Break and Enter, Bodies Electric, The Havana Room,
and
Manhattan Nocturne.
He and his wife, Kathryn Harrison, live in Brooklyn.

Marcella Hazan, the acknowledged godmother of Italian cooking in America, has written six cookbooks, including
The Classic Italian Cookbook, Essentials of Italian Cooking,
and
Marcella Cucina.
She lives with her husband, Victor, himself an authority on Italian food and wine, in Longboat Key, Florida.

Amanda Hesser is the food editor at
The New York Times Magazine.
She writes two columns—“The Way We Eat” and “The Arsenal”—in the weekly magazine and edits the
Times
’s food magazine,
T: Living.
She has published two books,
The Cook and the Gardener
and
Cooking for Mr. Latte,
both of which won the International Association of Culinary Professionals’ Literary Food Writing award. Her next book is a collection of
New York Times
recipes from 1853 until today.

Holly Hughes is the editor of the annual
Best Food Writing
anthology, and the author of
Frommer’s New York City with Kids
and
Frommer’s
500
Places to Take Your Kids Before They Grow Up.
She lives in New York City and has three children, all of whom know how to cook.

Jeremy Jackson was raised in central Missouri and is a graduate of Vassar College and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where he received a teaching-writing fellowship. He’s the author of the novels
In Summer
and
Life at These Speeds,
which is being developed for a feature film. His cookbooks include
Desserts That Have Killed Better Men Than Me, Good Day for a Picnic,
and
The Cornbread Book,
which was nominated for a James Beard Award. He has written about food for the
Chicago Tribune
and
The Washington Post,
and was featured in
Food & Wine
magazine. He lives in Iowa City, Iowa.

Rosa Jurjevics is, among other things, a video editor and writer. When not doodling on napkins, she spends her time animating, meeting deadlines, and wrangling computer files. Her written work has been featured in the
San Diego Reader
and
Real Simple
magazine and her 2001 video,
Heirographics,
was chosen for the HBO 30
x
30
Kid Flicks
film festival. Her art has been featured in various shows organized by the SunArts Collective in New York.

Ben Karlin was the head writer, then the executive producer, of
The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
from 1999 to 2006. In 2005 he cocreated
The Colbert Report
, starring Stephen Colbert. Karlin collaborated with Jon Stewart, David Javerbaum, and the rest of the Daily Show staff on
America: The Book (A Citizen’s Guide to Democracy Inaction)
. Prior to his work with Comedy Central, he was an editor of
The Onion
in Madison, Wisconsin. He currently lives in New York City, the birthplace of the five-dollar cappuccino.

Rattawut Lapcharoensap is the author of
Sightseeing,
a collection of short stories, which was a finalist for the Guardian First Book Award and the New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award. His stories have appeared in
Granta, Zoetrope: All-Story, One Story, Glimmer Train, Best New American Voices,
and
Best American Non-Required Reading.
He lives in New York City.

Beverly Lowry was born in Memphis and reared in Greenville, Mississippi. She is the author of six novels—including
Come Back, Lolly Ray; Daddy’s Girl;
and
The Track of Real Desires
—and three books of nonfiction:
Crossed Over: A Murder, A Memoir; Her Dream of Dreams: The Rise and Triumph of Madam C. J. Walker;
and
Harriet Tubman: Imagining a Life.
Her book reviews have appeared in the
New York Times,
the
Houston Chronicle,
and the
Los Angeles Times,
and her essays and feature journalism in various anthologies as well as
The New Yorker, Granta, Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, Redbook,
and
Ladies’ Home Journal.
The past recipient of Guggenheim and Rockefeller fellowships, she teaches in the MFA program at George Mason University. She lives with Tom Johnson in Austin, near her son and not far from Wimberley, where her mother and father lived and are buried.

Haruki Murakami was born in Kyoto in 1949 and now lives near Tokyo. He is the author of the novels
Kafka on the Shore; Sputnik Sweetheart; South of the Border, West of the Sun; The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle; Dance Dance Dance; Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World; Norwegian Wood;
and
A Wild Sheep Chase,
and of a collection of stories,
The Elephant Vanishes.
He is also the author of the nonfiction work
Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche.
His work has been translated into sixteen languages.

Phoebe Nobles recommends: Cream-Nut peanut butter from Grand Rapids, Michigan; Riga Gold smoked sprats with Bridgeport India Pale Ale from Portland, Oregon; Rogue River blue cheese; a pulled-pork sandwich at House Park BBQ in Austin; Wilkin and Sons tawny orange marmalade on buttered toast with black tea; Philippe’s French dip sandwich in Los Angeles;
banh-mi
from a strip mall in Houston; South Carolina peaches and fireworks at the Georgia border; Edmund Fitzgerald porter from Cleveland; blood sausage and an egg deep-fried in olive oil.

Ann Patchett is the author of five novels,
The Patron Saint of Liars, Taft, The Magician’s Assistant, Bel Canto,
and
Run
(forthcoming), as well as a memoir,
Truth & Beauty: A Friendship.
She has been the recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship, the PEN/ Faulkner Award, and England’s Orange Prize. She lives in Tennessee.

Anneli Rufus lives in California and is the author of four books, including
The Farewell Chronicles
and
Party of One.
She is the coauthor of five more, including
Weird Europe
and
California Babylon.
Several world-famous restaurants thrive in her town, and she has never set foot inside any of them.

Paula Wolfert is an internationally known cookbook author specializing in Mediterranean cuisine. Her award-winning books include
The Cooking of Southwest France, The Slow Mediterranean Kitchen,
and
Couscous and Other Good Food from Morocco.
She has won the Julia Child Award (twice), the James Beard Award (three times), the Tastemaker Award, the M. F. K. Fisher Prize, the Cooks Magazine Platinum Plate Award, and the Périgueux Award for Lifetime Achievement. Born in Brooklyn, the mother of two grown children, Paula has lived in Paris, Tangier, Manhattan, northwest Connecticut, and northern California. Married to crime fiction writer William Bayer, she currently lives in the Sonoma Valley.

Grateful acknowledgment for permission to reprint previously published material is made to the following:

Jonathan Ames, “Eggs Over Uneasy.” From the book
My Less Than Secret Life.
Copyright © 2002 by Jonathan Ames. Appears by permission of the publisher, Thunder’s Mouth Press, a division of Avalon Publishing Corp.

Mary Cantwell, “Dining Alone.” Copyright © by Mary Cantwell. Originally published in
Gourmet.
Reprinted by permission.

Laurie Colwin, “Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant.” From
Home Cooking: A Writer in the Kitchen
by Laurie Colwin, copyright © 1988 by Laurie Colwin. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.

Nora Ephron, “Potatoes and Love: Some Reflections.” From
Heartburn
by Nora Ephron. Copyright © 1983 by Nora Ephron. Used by permission of the author.

M. F. K. Fisher, “A Is for Dining Alone.” From
The Art of Eating:
50
th Anniversary Edition
by M. F. K. Fisher. Copyright © M. F. K. Fisher. Reprinted with permission of John Wiley & Sons.

Amanda Hesser, “Single Cuisine.” From
Cooking for Mr. Latte: A Food Lover’s Courtship, with Recipes,
by Amanda Hesser. Copyright © 2003 by Amanda Hesser. Used by permission of W. W. Norton & Company.

Haruki Murakami, “The Year of Spaghetti.” From
Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman,
by Haruki Murakami, translated by Philip Gabriel and Jay Rubin, copyright © 2006 by Haruki Murakami. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.